Friday, August 11, 2017

A. V. Koshy writes

Swapna Sundari (1)

(First Draft.)

Author's note: I have tried
to catch/net in poetic ellipsis what cannot ever be trapped so, especially only
by words. Only poetry can even try! This
poem, composed of these poems, is thus indirect and only tries to invoke, inside
one, the sweetness of the experience of a rare transcendence given to a rare, fortunate few on earth to experience, that
too, only for a brief while....

The Grecians had three or
nine Muses but I think I have only one or ten.

Prologue or Invocation to the
three Kharites

Euthymia (2), my love

be always at my right

Thalia (3), be my sole clear light

Aglaea (4), at the centre of my blight

remove this slight stain fallen on my poor sight

May my heart revive with the strength drawn

from your old world of graces

& charities

and I again troth my one dear plight

to my triage of quality: steadfastness bright

persisting, perforce perseveringly

& enduring; all my heart's true delight.

(1)Dream
Beauty.

(2)Euthymia is a normal non-depressed, reasonably positive mood. Jollity. One
of the three Graces or Charities. More popularly known as Euphrosyne. Grecian in
origin but also Latin and Western/Christian. My graces or charities or Muses
are Indian, both Christian and Hindu. They are the three facets of truth ,
namely steadfastness, persevarence/persistence and endurance and lead to
victory. Sathyamevajayathe..

(3)Thalia - Festivity, rich banquet, flourishing,

(4)
Aglaea - also Charis, the most beautiful of the three, meaning splendour or
glory.

1 comment:

The Kharites (Charites) were usually regarded as the daughters of Zeus and the oceanid Eurynome, the goddess of good order and lawful conduct (though Eurydome, Eurymedousa, or Euanthe were also named as their mother); sometimes they were described as the daughters of Dionysus and Aphrodite or of Helios and the naiad Aegle. Homeros wrote they were part of the retinue of Aphrodite and Eros and loved dancing around in a circle with the Nymphs and the Muses to the accompaniment of Apollo's music. The 5th-century BCE poet Pindaros claimed they were created to fill the world with pleasant moments and good will. The Cephissus river near Delphi was sacred to them, and their main cult was located in Athens, Sparta, and Boetia. Euthymia (“good thumos”) was a goddess of joy or mirth, the incarnation of grace and beauty. (“Thumos” indicated a physical association with breath or blood and was also used to express the human desire for recognition; it was a permanent possession of living humans, to which their thinking and feeling belonged. Homeros used the word to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge; a Homeric hero under emotional stress sometimes externalized his thumos and conversed with or scolded it. Platon regarded it as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche: in the “Phaedrus” he depicted “logos” as a charioteer driving the two horses eros [erotic love] and thumos [spiritedness], while in “The Republic” he divided the soul into nous ["intellect"], thumos ["passion"], and epithumia ["appetite"].) Democritus used "euthymia" to refer to a condition in which the soul lives calmly and steadily, being disturbed by no fear, superstition, or other passions. For Democritus euthymia was one of the root aspects the goal of human life, according to Diogenes Laertius, Democritus held it to be the "chief good,” … which, however, he does not consider the same as pleasure; as some people, who have misunderstood him, have fancied that he meant; but he understands by cheerfulness, a condition according to which the soul lives calmly and steadily, being disturbed by no fear, or superstition, or other passion." Lucius Annaeus Seneca defined euthymia as “believing in yourself and trusting that you are on the right path, and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths of those wandering in every direction.” In modern medicine euthymia is a normal non-depressed, reasonably positive, or neutral mood. Also known as Euphrosyne, a family of marine worms (the Euphrosinidae) is named after her. Thalia was the goddess of festivity and rich banquets. The Greek word thalia is an adjective applied to banquets, meaning rich, plentiful, luxuriant and abundant. The eighth-born of the Muses, the goddess who presided over comedy and idyllic poetry, also bore her name. Thaleia is a genus of tiny ectoparasitic sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks, and micromollusks in the Eulimidae family. (Thalia is also a genus of plant species found in aquatic or marshy habitats, but it was named in honor of Johannes Thal, a 16th-century botanist.) Aglaea ("splendor, brilliant, shining one") was the goddess of beauty, splendor, glory, magnificence, and adornment. She sometimes acted as the messenger of Aphrodite and was also known as Charis (the Grace) and Cale (Beauty), and was married to her half-brother Hephaestus, the god of smithing and volcanoes, after his divorce from Aphrodite; they were the parents of Eucleia ("Good Repute"), Eupheme ("Acclaim"), Euthenia ("Prosperity"), and Philophrosyne ("Welcome").